I had a similar memory problems with my 2011 iMac. It had only 4 GB of RAM. The machine started pretty fast to filling up my swap. After it started paging out the machine was unusable for some minutes. I don't know if this is true but I think the HDDs in the 2011 iMac are not that good.
I upgraded the memory to 12 GB. Since then working on my iMac is a lot easier.
But the troubles are still there (from time to time). A few days ago I ran Virtualbox and Parallels Desktop 7. I had a 5 GB big swap, the machine started paging out and it slowed down. I had to quit some apps to solve the problem.
So I have to agree with the author of the article that Lion has a weak memory management. Apple must fix this. Running a 12 GB of RAM machine and getting a sluggish machine?
I think that if I would install an SSD my iMac would be a lot faster. Also the paging out.
I upgraded the memory to 12 GB. Since then working on my iMac is a lot easier.
But the troubles are still there (from time to time). A few days ago I ran Virtualbox and Parallels Desktop 7. I had a 5 GB big swap, the machine started paging out and it slowed down. I had to quit some apps to solve the problem.
So I have to agree with the author of the article that Lion has a weak memory management. Apple must fix this. Running a 12 GB of RAM machine and getting a sluggish machine?
I think that if I would install an SSD my iMac would be a lot faster. Also the paging out.